I first heard about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python at PyCodeConf a few months ago. It’s a fantastic idea: open source, community-driven documentation on how to do Python right: everything from how to learn Python, to how to write idiomatic code, to how to distribute your projects, to surveys of best-of-breed open source projects and libraries you can build projects and applications on top of. Many many thanks to Kenneth Reitz for creating and maintaining the project, which is hosted at GitHub.

At this time, the Hitchhiker’s guide is a little rough around the edges: many sections are only outlined, and need content written; other sections may not even exist yet. We can safely consider it a first draft, or, if you prefer, an alpha.

This sort of undertaking is effectively impossible for one person to maintain—one person can’t possibly know of every project, library, and idiom. Moreover, it’s unfair as a user of the Guide to demand that one person must do all the work.

Therefore, a call to action: in order to make the Python community great, everyone should fork the Hitchhiker’s Guide today, find (or add) a section of interest, and submit a pull request. If you’re lucky, Kenneth will give you a sparkly cake.

And a pledge: time allowing (for, sadly, contributing to Python documentation is not my day job), I will make one contribution to the Hitchhiker’s Guide per week until it reaches completion, or until there’s nothing left to which I can conscientiously contribute (I won’t attempt to document things which I know too little about).

Finally, since this is a community effort, I want to give a shout-out to all those who’ve contributed to the Guide so far:

Kenneth Reitz (follow on Twitter & GitHub)

Aaron Weinberger (follow on GitHub)

Kamil Kisiel (follow on Twitter & GitHub)

Seyi Ogunyemi (follow on Twitter & GitHub)

Alex Gaynor (follow on Twitter & Github)

nstielau (follow on GitHub)

Adam Brenecki (follow on Twitter & GitHub)

Nanda Kishore (follow on GitHub)

Donald Stufft (follow on Twitter and GitHub)

Brent O'Connor (follow on Twitter & GitHub)

Dalton Barreto (follow on Twitter & GitHub)

Daniel Schauenberg (follow on Twitter & GitHub)

Thanks to everyone who’s helping to make Python a better place!

(To the folks above, if you’d like me to add or correct any of the contact information, please leave a comment.)